When I first applied to the University of Rhode Island to be a Secondary Education and Biology Major, I thought this meant I was going to be studying how to teach science. It turns out that over the course of my four years here I have learned that sometimes the subject you teach is the least important thing you do in the classroom. Of course the content matter is still important but when it really comes down to it I know that very few of my biology students are going to remember years down the road the exact order of steps in Mitosis. However, they might just remember that my class was when they started to appreciate science. It’s the big things like teaching your students to enjoy science that is going to stick with them throughout their lives, not the tiny details of complicated scientific processes. I believe that it is important to develop the whole child and work on their major skills, like becoming critical thinkers, and learning to read a scientific text. I want to teach my students to have confidence in themselves, especially when it comes to science. Through my experiences in the education field so far I have seen many students who give up on science because they think it is too hard. By engaging my students and teaching to every different learning style, I hope to show my students that anyone can do science. To that end I also want to show my students that everyone learns differently and that’s OK. Not everyone can open a text book, sit and read it and pass the exam. Some of us need to hear it aloud, or work with our hands to understand what is going on. My students should learn to respect themselves and their peers as individual and unique learners.
To help my students reach some of these goals, I have some goals for myself. I want to be patient and express to my students clearly what is expected of them. That does not mean I plan to spell out exactly what needs to be done for every assignment but rather that there is a certain amount of effort that I will expect at all times. I want to be someone my students feel comfortable talking to, asking questions of, and trusting. After observing many different teachers and various schools around Rhode Island, I have learned that no two teachers are exactly alike. Some are soft spoken and will wait patiently for a class to settle down, others are loud and command respect and quiet rooms by projecting their own voices. Some teachers write on overhead slides, others use a chalk board, and some simply lecture. I do not believe that there is any one correct way to teach. However I do think that there are some basic qualities that all teachers should posses. They need to be open-minded, patient, knowledgeable in their content area, enthusiastic, and respectful. Every teacher is going to go about teaching with their own style and I think that that is okay so long as they teach to every learning style and care about their subject matter and students. This semester, at my student teaching placement, I observed and learned many new things. For example, it was the first time I experienced being in a classroom for the whole school day, staying with the same students for so long, and block scheduling. I still believe in everything I wrote about above at the beginning of the semester, but I now have more to add and can only imagine that my teaching philosophy will continue to grow as my experience as a teacher grows. This semester I have worked with two team classes which are composed of students who are at least one grade level behind in their reading and writing skills. From this class I have learned that the students are smart but many of them lack confidence which leads them into bad habits such as not doing their work because they think ‘why bother I’m going to fail anyway.’ This bothers me because I know from working with them that they are more than capable of doing the work but it seems like I believe in them more than they believe in themselves. Therefore, I have learned that something called assessment for learning is much better than assessment of learning. This means that instead of using assessments to measure student learning teachers should use assessment to continue the learning process. For example, I plan on letting students revise their work if they do not earn the grade they desire. This way students learn more than if you just fail them and that’s it and also their confidence grows as they realize the kinds of grades they are capable of earning. Assessment for learning has become a major part of my teaching philosophy and I plan on using it in all my future classrooms with all my future students. I’ve also learned that even the best teachers and well thought out lessons can fail. You never know how students are going to react to certain lessons or even the mood they will be in that day which can affect a lessons outcome. Therefore, I would like to add that I want to be a flexible teacher. What I mean by this is I want to have well planned lessons but also be able to think on my feet and be flexible enough that if a lesson is going badly I can change it on the spot to better suit my students needs. If teachers are too fixed in their plans I think this can be detrimental to their students because they will not be able to change the lesson or their teaching style to better promote the objective of the lesson. Therefore, I plan on always being open minded and mindful of how my lessons are actually going and change them as I see fit, even if that means changing my plans for the day on the spot, or pushing back a test to better cover difficult material. When my students look back at what they learned in my class I want them to be able to say that yes they learned science in my classroom but more importantly they learned how to be better learners. I want my students to not only learn science but learn to like and appreciate science. My students should leave my classroom feeling that they know themselves better as learners and respect their own and their peer’s individual learning styles. Up until this semester at URI not one teacher has said okay, this is how you teach science. At first I was confused as to why no one would tell us how to teach our subject, my education and science classes seemed so separated and this bothered me. Now I know that this was done because sometimes there are more important things to teach then the subject.
As I prepare to leave my student teaching placement, graduate from college, and apply for real full-time teaching positions, I have spent some time reflecting on my teaching philosophy. These philosophies were written before I had ever taught a full class, let alone teach 3 preps and 4 classes for 14 weeks, so it seems naturally that some edits could be made to what I wrote previously. One thing that really jumped out at me as I re-read this is that I never mentioned classroom management, which is something I have learned from student teaching is essential to being a good teacher. I do not mean that you need to be strict to be a good teacher but rather that you have to have clear rules, and stick to them. With so many things going on in a classroom a teacher would quickly become frusturated if they did not know what rules were important to them and that their students understood how they were expected to act in their classroom. I have also learned that clear consequences for rule breaking need to be adhered to otherwise students will walk all over you. Therefore, if you say johnny if I hear that again you have detention and then johnny says that again, you need to give him dentention. A final thing I have learned about classroom management is that there is a lot more going on with students than meets the eye. For example, I had a student this semester who was acting up really bad in class, so his team of teachers called a parent conference, where we learned that some very serious family issues were going on at home. We developed a plan with this students mom, where she let us know when big things were happening at home so we could be aware of these things while that student was in our rooms. I believe it is just as important to find out why a student is acting out as it is to punish them for it because only if you know why a student is acting a certain way can you hope to fix it.One last thing I would like to add to my teaching philosophy is that before I actually started teaching I seemed to talk heavily about how studenst remembering my class as a place they learned to love science was more important than what details of scientific processes they remember. Why I still believe that is true in the long run, it has become clear to me that there are certain concepts students need to grasp now not only to pass a class but for more high stakes testing like the NECAP. Therefore, I would like to revise those comments to that while I still want students to learn to love science in my room I want them to do that through learning the concepts they need to know now.
I was correct when I wrote before that my teaching philosophy would grow over time. It has grown alot in just 14 short weeks of student teaching, and that is while I was working in another teachers classroom. Therefore, I fully expect my teaching philosophy to grow and become better all the time as I enter the teaching world full time.
I believe that it is important to develop the whole child and work on their major skills, like becoming critical thinkers, and learning to read a scientific text. I want to teach my students to have confidence in themselves, especially when it comes to science. Through my experiences in the education field so far I have seen many students who give up on science because they think it is too hard. By engaging my students and teaching to every different learning style, I hope to show my students that anyone can do science. To that end I also want to show my students that everyone learns differently and that’s OK. Not everyone can open a text book, sit and read it and pass the exam. Some of us need to hear it aloud, or work with our hands to understand what is going on. My students should learn to respect themselves and their peers as individual and unique learners.
To help my students reach some of these goals, I have some goals for myself. I want to be patient and express to my students clearly what is expected of them. That does not mean I plan to spell out exactly what needs to be done for every assignment but rather that there is a certain amount of effort that I will expect at all times. I want to be someone my students feel comfortable talking to, asking questions of, and trusting. After observing many different teachers and various schools around Rhode Island, I have learned that no two teachers are exactly alike. Some are soft spoken and will wait patiently for a class to settle down, others are loud and command respect and quiet rooms by projecting their own voices. Some teachers write on overhead slides, others use a chalk board, and some simply lecture. I do not believe that there is any one correct way to teach. However I do think that there are some basic qualities that all teachers should posses. They need to be open-minded, patient, knowledgeable in their content area, enthusiastic, and respectful. Every teacher is going to go about teaching with their own style and I think that that is okay so long as they teach to every learning style and care about their subject matter and students.
This semester, at my student teaching placement, I observed and learned many new things. For example, it was the first time I experienced being in a classroom for the whole school day, staying with the same students for so long, and block scheduling. I still believe in everything I wrote about above at the beginning of the semester, but I now have more to add and can only imagine that my teaching philosophy will continue to grow as my experience as a teacher grows.
This semester I have worked with two team classes which are composed of students who are at least one grade level behind in their reading and writing skills. From this class I have learned that the students are smart but many of them lack confidence which leads them into bad habits such as not doing their work because they think ‘why bother I’m going to fail anyway.’ This bothers me because I know from working with them that they are more than capable of doing the work but it seems like I believe in them more than they believe in themselves. Therefore, I have learned that something called assessment for learning is much better than assessment of learning. This means that instead of using assessments to measure student learning teachers should use assessment to continue the learning process. For example, I plan on letting students revise their work if they do not earn the grade they desire. This way students learn more than if you just fail them and that’s it and also their confidence grows as they realize the kinds of grades they are capable of earning. Assessment for learning has become a major part of my teaching philosophy and I plan on using it in all my future classrooms with all my future students.
I’ve also learned that even the best teachers and well thought out lessons can fail. You never know how students are going to react to certain lessons or even the mood they will be in that day which can affect a lessons outcome. Therefore, I would like to add that I want to be a flexible teacher. What I mean by this is I want to have well planned lessons but also be able to think on my feet and be flexible enough that if a lesson is going badly I can change it on the spot to better suit my students needs. If teachers are too fixed in their plans I think this can be detrimental to their students because they will not be able to change the lesson or their teaching style to better promote the objective of the lesson. Therefore, I plan on always being open minded and mindful of how my lessons are actually going and change them as I see fit, even if that means changing my plans for the day on the spot, or pushing back a test to better cover difficult material.
When my students look back at what they learned in my class I want them to be able to say that yes they learned science in my classroom but more importantly they learned how to be better learners. I want my students to not only learn science but learn to like and appreciate science. My students should leave my classroom feeling that they know themselves better as learners and respect their own and their peer’s individual learning styles. Up until this semester at URI not one teacher has said okay, this is how you teach science. At first I was confused as to why no one would tell us how to teach our subject, my education and science classes seemed so separated and this bothered me. Now I know that this was done because sometimes there are more important things to teach then the subject.
As I prepare to leave my student teaching placement, graduate from college, and apply for real full-time teaching positions, I have spent some time reflecting on my teaching philosophy. These philosophies were written before I had ever taught a full class, let alone teach 3 preps and 4 classes for 14 weeks, so it seems naturally that some edits could be made to what I wrote previously. One thing that really jumped out at me as I re-read this is that I never mentioned classroom management, which is something I have learned from student teaching is essential to being a good teacher. I do not mean that you need to be strict to be a good teacher but rather that you have to have clear rules, and stick to them. With so many things going on in a classroom a teacher would quickly become frusturated if they did not know what rules were important to them and that their students understood how they were expected to act in their classroom. I have also learned that clear consequences for rule breaking need to be adhered to otherwise students will walk all over you. Therefore, if you say johnny if I hear that again you have detention and then johnny says that again, you need to give him dentention. A final thing I have learned about classroom management is that there is a lot more going on with students than meets the eye. For example, I had a student this semester who was acting up really bad in class, so his team of teachers called a parent conference, where we learned that some very serious family issues were going on at home. We developed a plan with this students mom, where she let us know when big things were happening at home so we could be aware of these things while that student was in our rooms. I believe it is just as important to find out why a student is acting out as it is to punish them for it because only if you know why a student is acting a certain way can you hope to fix it. One last thing I would like to add to my teaching philosophy is that before I actually started teaching I seemed to talk heavily about how studenst remembering my class as a place they learned to love science was more important than what details of scientific processes they remember. Why I still believe that is true in the long run, it has become clear to me that there are certain concepts students need to grasp now not only to pass a class but for more high stakes testing like the NECAP. Therefore, I would like to revise those comments to that while I still want students to learn to love science in my room I want them to do that through learning the concepts they need to know now.
I was correct when I wrote before that my teaching philosophy would grow over time. It has grown alot in just 14 short weeks of student teaching, and that is while I was working in another teachers classroom. Therefore, I fully expect my teaching philosophy to grow and become better all the time as I enter the teaching world full time.